The name “Beaner” was printed on this Starbucks cup given to a Latino customer at a La Cañada Flintridge store.

Starbucks is investigating after a customer at a La Cañada Flintridge store said he received two coffee cups with the word “Beaner” – a derogatory term for Mexicans – printed on them in place of his name this week.

A Starbucks spokeswoman, in a voicemail on Thursday, said that “this kind of mistake is unacceptable” but would not elaborate in a follow-up email on on why she believed it was a mistake. She said the company is taking additional steps to determine what happened and how their employees “can be better.”

The company’s leadership team met Thursday with the customer at a local store in the area, the spokeswoman said, and he accepted their apology.

“We are conducting a full investigation into this incident to understand how this happened and to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” the company said in part in an emailed statement.

The customer, a Latino immigrant named Pedro, confirmed to the Daily News Thursday that Starbucks spoke with him and asked for forgiveness.

“It’s not good what they did, but they have spoken with me,” he said in Spanish, declining further comment.

Tuesday’s incident comes as Starbucks plans to close more than 8,000 of its company-owned stores across the country on May 29 to conduct “racial-bias” training in an effort to prevent discrimination at its stories.

Starbucks in La Canada Flintridge was tagged with “BNR??” on Wednesday, May 16, 2018, after a Starbucks patron received two coffee cups with the term “Beaner” on Tuesday. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

That decision was made after two African American men were arrested in April after sitting at a Starbucks in Philadelphia without ordering something. The men, who were waiting for someone to arrive, settled with the coffee-shop chain earlier this month for an undisclosed amount along with an offer of a free college education.

Meanwhile, Jesse Poor said he was offended when he saw his co-worker’s Starbucks coffee cups on Tuesday with the word “Beaner” printed on them at the nearby restaurant where they work.

Pedro arrived at work Tuesday afternoon looking down, he said. Pedro relayed to him that he had ordered two coffee drinks that day at the shop on Foothill Boulevard and both had the derogatory term on them.

“It’s not cool for someone to do that to somebody because of the way he looks,” Poor said.

But Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lt. Gary Harman indicated the incident may not have been an intentional slur. Employees of the Starbucks in La Cañada Flintridge told authorities that the barista believed a Latino customer had identified himself as “Beaner,” and thus placed the term on his coffee cup Tuesday.

The next day, Wednesday, May 16, someone used shoe polish to write “BNR??” on the same Starbucks building at 475 Foothill Blvd., Harman said, adding that he believes the incidents were too coincidental not to be related.

Meanwhile, a Sheriff’s Department deputy took a report from the Starbucks store to document the incident, Harman said.

“It doesn’t appear to us – at first look – that there was any intent,” he said.

It was not immediately clear, however, how the name Pedro could have been mistaken for the word “beaner.”

Harman noted that the barista herself is reportedly Latina. The barista, after taking the order, entered the name into the computer. The name came out on a receipt that was placed on the cup.

Harman said the graffiti written on the Starbuck’s store window was easily wiped off.

Deputies took a vandalism report to document the incident. It was unlikely to go much farther, he added, because they have no leads on who might have tagged the coffeehouse.

A customer reads in Starbucks where the remnants of a “BNR??” tagging can be seen on Wednesday, May 16, 2018, in La Canada Flintridge. A Starbucks patron received two coffee cups with the term “Beaner” on Tuesday. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Poor, infuriated by the use of the derogatory term involving his coworker, said he took to Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat to post images of the cups, decrying Starbucks as #racist. Other coworkers publicized the incident on Facebook.

“Anything racial like that, I would not that let that slide…it’s disrespectful,” Poor said.

On Thursday, Starbucks customer Rena Partamian, who was picking up an order of drinks for her peers at the same store, said she didn’t expect this to happen there.

“We always come here; they seem super friendly,” she said.

Partamian said she would likely avoid purchasing anything from the store “for a few weeks” because of the incident.

“I just think it’s disrespectful,” she said. “If Starbucks does it, it kind of makes it seem like it’s Okay to do it.”

Mike Sayovitz, a minister who was about to pick up his drink order, said he would never use a racial slur and said the Starbucks barista involved should apologize to the customer.

But he argued that racial issues can be blown out of proportion by the media or rehashed for political purposes, making it more inflammatory than necessary.

“It keeps getting replanted because of people’s anger and they can’t let things go,” he said.

All people are “broken” and will speak and act out of this brokenness on a daily basis, he said. The barista herself may not have even understood that such language can be hurtful.

Manuel Pastor, a professor of sociology at USC, said the word beaner is historically a “very derogatory term” that refers to Mexicans eating a lot of beans.

While it is not as bad as some racial and ethnic slurs, it is “edging toward (the slur) wetback,” Pastor said, a term that refers to Mexican immigrants, particularly those living in the U.S. without authorization.

Young people should be aware that beaner is a derogatory and negative term, he added.

“Even if a person said it, you might not want to put it on a cup because…you don’t want to repeat someone else’s slur, ” Pastor said.

Shaun Harper, a professor and executive director of the USC Race and Equity Center argued that the training Starbucks has planned will not be enough.

“Racism and racist views cannot be unlearned in one afternoon,” Harper said. “There has to be prolonged professional learning around racial issues for Starbucks employees across the country.”

Implicit bias is like smog that people breathe their entire lives without realizing it, he added. And it has “toxic effects” on the way people view, think of and interact with people from racial groups that are different from their own.

There’s also internalized racism, which is when people of color have been taught racially derogatory things about themselves and internalize those messages, Harper said.

“For me, the larger concern is less about what this employee called Pedro but more about how common these occurrences are,” Harper said.

“They happen in Starbucks and coffee shops and places all the time where racially offensive things are printed on receipts to identify customers. This is not a new thing.”

For Sarah Krausse, who also works with Pedro at the nearby restaurant, it was “really upsetting” to see the term beaner on her coworker’s coffee cups.

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Brian Rokos writes about public safety issues such as policing, criminal justice, scams, how law affects public safety, firefighting tactics and wildland fire danger. He has also covered the cities of San Bernardino, Corona, Norco, Lake Elsinore, Perris, Canyon Lake and Hemet. Before that he supervised reporters and worked as a copy editor. For some reason, he enjoys movies where the Earth is threatened with extinction.

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